Paid Leave Quotes

No one who works full time and has children should be poor in America.

Were the workers who sweated to put food on my table paid at least minimum wage? Did they get health benefits? Overtime? Were they unionized? Protected from pesticide exposure?

When I travel around the country and talk about the need to raise the minimum wage or expand access to paid leave, I often talk about the need for us to reject false choices.

Equal pay, paid leave, paid sick days, workplace flexibility, and affordable childcare - everywhere I go around the United States, as I talk to working families, these are the issues they raise... We have over 43 million Americans who don't have a single day of sick leave, but everybody gets sick. Everybody's children get sick.

I'm going to do everything I can to bring our policies in line with the way families live and work today by guaranteeing paid family leave and making child care affordable.

We need affordable childcare and paid sick leave so workers don't have to choose between their health and their livelihood.

People are working hard, they're doing everything we ask of them, and they are still struggling. It's not enough to just have a job. We need to make sure that these are good-paying jobs that pay the rent and put food on the table. Jobs that have benefits like health care and that allow people to save for retirement.

I am a fierce advocate for the economic empowerment of all women. In the Congress, I am one of the leaders of an initiative called 'When Women Succeed, America Succeeds.' It is an economic agenda for women aimed at making sure women have equal pay for equal work, paid sick leave, and affordable child care.

Yes, we've still got more work to do. More work to do for every American still in need of a good job or a raise, paid leave or a decent retirement; for every child who needs a sturdier ladder out of poverty or a world-class education; for everyone who has not yet felt the progress of these past seven and a half years.

Your U.S. military has the best child care in the nation. Full, paid family and medical leave benefits. Why aren't we doing that to empower our workforce?

It's embarrassing to be in the only westernized economy that doesn't have paid family leave and flex scheduling, and that disproportionately helps women.

Labor Day is a time to recognize and reflect on that work, and for elected officials to recommit to the too-often ignored task of fighting to improve the lives of working families.

As I travel around the country, I am inspired by leaders who know that offering paid leave - whether sick time or family leave - isn't just the right thing to do: it's essential to building an economy that works for everyone.

The United States has got to join the rest of the industrialized world in making sure that working families of the middle class have benefits that they absolutely need. We are the only major country on Earth that does not guarantee health care to all people as a right. We are the only major country on Earth that does not provide paid family and medical leave. There are many countries around the world which make sure that public colleges and universities are tuition-free. In our country, it's becoming increasingly difficult to afford to go to college.

The next day I was put on paid leave from my new job at Louisiana State University. This is very painful to me, though once again I understand the circumstances in which my employers find themselves in light of these actions taken against me.

We need a national family leave policy that will allow both men and women to take paid time off from work to care for a newborn or a sick relative.

In an economy where women now make up half the work force, we're going to have to address the treatment of pregnant employees more systemically. The passage of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act would better protect against the discrimination pregnant job seekers face.

Creating paid family and medical leave will create a foundation for healthier families, healthier workplaces and the chance to have a growing and thriving population of families in Maine.

I know many Europeans and I think many of them don't even believe me when I say that people in US don't have vacations. Obviously a lot of people do but there are many, tens of millions of people that don't and there's certainly no guarantee of a vacation. So paid time off is very valuable where people know they could get four or five weeks vacation, which is absolutely standard in Europe. Denmark has 6 weeks. So I think that's something that's very valuable, giving people time off.

In Connecticut, we have a vibrant history of advocating to ensure our workers are treated fairly and given the rights and protections they deserve. Still, we need to do more to protect all American workers.

We shouldn't think of family leave as an elite benefit, only available at some companies. Everyone in Maine, whether they have a child or are caring for a sick family member, should have access to this same benefit. It should be like unemployment insurance, there for you when you need it.

[Martin Luther King, Jr.] would want us to celebrate him, his birth, and his legacy by acting upon his agenda, by realizing the dream, by making the minimum wage a living wage, by having not just family and medical leave, but paid sick leave for our workers, [and] by having quality, affordable child care so that our families, the power of women can be unleashed in our economy and in our society.

I know this: Secretary Clinton will fight for working families, and that's what I'm going to do as well.

Workplaces need to respond to the reality of family life in the 21st century, and allowing employees to have seven sick days a year is a bare minimum, the fact that the United States is one of just a handful of countries that does not require paid family or sick leave is nothing short of shameful.

Paid family leave, for instance, has strong backing in scientific literature as an effective means of enabling families who want kids to have them.